by Rachel Caine
“Riley—we don’t even know if it works,” Bryn said. “The Fountain Group had access to that syringe before we did; they could have swapped out the drug with saline, for all we know. If they did, if they’ve got the genuine cure and we don’t . . . they can take us out, and we’ve got nothing. Thorpe told me something important, and I need to follow it up.”
Riley didn’t move, and didn’t holster her weapon, either. “So you want to leave our transportation and just . . . go. Where?”
“We have the lead Pansy gave me.”
“What, somewhere in Northern California? In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a big area. That’s insane. You’re just asking Jane to kill you.”
“Maybe,” Bryn said. “But if you don’t make it back to Manny, or if that syringe is useless, we might lose our only solid lead. So we need to follow both tracks, don’t we? I’ll go. You two go the other way. I’ll see you again.”
“Are you sure?” Joe asked her.
“Yes.”
“Good enough for me,” Joe said. “Ease off, Riley.”
“No.”
“Jesus,” Joe sighed, annoyed, and drew his own gun. He wasn’t as fast a draw as Riley, but he didn’t need to be, because they both knew he was probably just as good a shot. He aimed straight for her, two-handed. “Back the fuck off. Bryn’s right. We get out now, and split up. Lonnie, you’re welcome to come with us if you want.”
“Uh . . . no, thanks. I’ll . . . stay here,” Lonnie said. He looked rigid, hands locked to the steering wheel, and his eyes were about to bug right out of his sockets. His blood pressure must have been through the roof. “Thanks . . . ?” That last came faintly, almost as a question.
Joe didn’t take his eyes off of Riley as he said, “Okay then. Sorry, man. About everything. You didn’t deserve any of this, and I wish I could change it.”
“No, it’s okay, it’s okay. I won’t say a thing, really.”
Lonnie thought Joe was going to shoot him, and Bryn thought he was probably right. . . . But then Joe shook his head, opened the passenger door, and descended from the truck. “Bryn,” he said. “You next.”
She cocked an eyebrow at Riley. “You going to shoot me?”
“Probably not.”
Bryn took her at her word, and eased backward out the door, hopping down onto the pavement and standing next to Joe. Riley followed, smooth as a snake, landing flat-footed and absolutely steady with her aim on Joe. “Are we done with this bullshit?” she asked.
“Guess so,” he said, and holstered his sidearm, apparently unconcerned with what she would do. Bryn watched her—not the eyes, because it wasn’t the eyes that betrayed people, it was the micro-twitches in the hands.
But Riley simply put her gun away, too, and the standoff was over. “Hold this, Joe,” she said, and gave him the syringe. “I’m going back for supplies before Lonnie rabbits it out of here.” She disappeared back into the truck, and emerged about fifteen seconds later with backpacks, which she tossed to each of them. Bryn strapped hers on, and the weight settled in nicely. One thing about being in the infantry, you never forgot the feel of a kit on your back. Like riding a bike. Or at least, like going on twenty-mile hikes carrying half your weight.
By unspoken consent, they moved away from the truck and into the shelter of a big, low-spreading tree—the kind of landscape people called trash trees, Bryn recalled, short-lived and strong-willed. Lonnie wasted no time in laying the hammer down, and he was over the horizon in less time than it took Bryn to get her directional bearings.
“You’re sure about splitting up?” Joe asked. “Because I get where you’re going, but I’m not sure you’ll make it.”
“Riley’s right about the formula,” Bryn said. “It needs to get back to Manny; that’s vital. If this is the answer, he’s the only one we can trust to analyze and—hopefully—reproduce it.”
“You really think he’s going to let us back inside? He seemed a little, I don’t know, paranoid.”
“Pansy will make him.” Bryn tried to sound sure of that, but in truth, she wasn’t sure; no one could be sure of what Manny would do. But she hoped she was right, anyway. “And this plays into his paranoia, because he’ll be the only one with the cure. Then it’ll be up to you to pry it out of his hands, of course, but one step at a time. I love the guy, but he’s definitely Handle With Care.” She turned her attention on Riley. “Unless you think you’re going to take it and give it to your bosses.”
Riley cocked an eyebrow. “I never made any secret of the fact that I work for the FBI. I never said I quit. And it doesn’t matter, because in this, the federal government and our little rogue op have exactly the same goals: stop the spread of infection, and stop the Fountain Group. Manny’s our best option.”
“Are you under orders right now?” Joe asked. It sounded like a casual question, and it would have been easy to mistake him for relaxed, standing here under the gently rustling leaves of the trash tree, with the sun beating down. But he wasn’t.
“Not as such,” Riley said, and tilted her head just a little. Her eyes narrowed. “You think they surveilled us. Satellite?”
“Wouldn’t put that shit past them,” Joe said. “We already know they’re into the air force’s command and control; all it would really take would be a drone flyover. Could have been slipped in without anybody noticing at all. But yeah, if they were sharp enough to set the trap, they’re sharp enough to watch and see who walks away from it. We stay in the truck, we’re marked, at best. Or we’re—”
“Dead,” Bryn finished softly. She looked after the truck, but it was lost to view now, heading fast down the road. “You made the offer, Joe. Whatever happens now, you made the offer to him.”
“Look, let’s not kid ourselves, the best thing that guy has to look forward to now is torture and death, or—if he’s really damn lucky—they’ll just bomb the shit out of the truck and kill him that way. But he’s not walking away unscathed. We all know that.” Joe was expressionless, but there was a glitter in his eyes, something sharp and angry. “We owe it to him to not fail, you understand. We don’t owe Thorpe; he started this—fuck him. We owe Lonnie. We owe the Lonnies of this world who get caught in the middle.”
Bryn was caught by surprise, but she slowly nodded. So did Riley. “I was Lonnie once, too,” she said. “I walked into this. I was just—taking a job. I went in the wrong door at the wrong time. And you’re right. But I can’t forget that we got Lonnie into this—not our enemies.”
“Innocent people are going to die in this,” Joe said. “Don’t like it, but I have to accept it. Innocents are who we’re fighting for. Not ourselves, not the government, not the military, just . . . the ones who don’t even see this coming.”
It was almost as if they’d made some kind of pact, and Bryn supposed they had—a quiet, unspoken sort of promise that didn’t need handshakes or salutes. Just nods.
Joe dug in his pocket and handed over what looked like—lipstick? No, it was the same general cylindrical shape, but when he pulled the cap off, there was a round black button on it. “You get where you’re safe, you push this,” he said, and recapped the thing. “Patrick will read the coordinates and come to you. But make sure you’re someplace you can wait for him. Like I said: one use only.”
“Got it,” she said, and zipped it into a pocket on her pants. One thing she was hoping not to lose this time: her pants.
“Want to tell us where you’re heading?” Riley asked.
Bryn slowly shook her head, still watching the horizon. “No,” she said. “I don’t.”
“Probably not wrong,” Joe Fideli said. He hugged her hard, and she hugged him back, suddenly shaky inside because, although she didn’t particularly mind splitting from Riley, Joe was . . . different. And he must have known that, because he kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Want to know a secret, kid?”
“Sure.”
“If I wasn’t already married . . .”
“Tease.” She kissed him back
on the cheek, and stepped away, and got a real, and very sweet, smile from him. “Take care of yourselves.”
Riley didn’t hug. She settled for a nod, and then Bryn set out at a run, heading west.
When she looked back, they were gone.
Chapter 8
It was a risk—a big one—to hitchhike. . . . Not for the obvious personal dangers that the post-1970s generations took for granted, but because Bryn knew that she’d be exposing those drivers—innocent, like Lonnie—to the possibility of torture and death, and she didn’t intend for that to happen again. Not unless she didn’t have another option. She resorted to her old trick—jumping on the back of the cabs of random tractor trailers when they paused for the merge at the next northward freeway. Then it was just a matter of balance and endurance. It wasn’t too bad, though; the roads were mostly smooth, the wind buffeting manageable, though she had to shield her eyes to avoid drying them out. She was noticed a few times by passing cars, and as soon as she spotted the driver’s or passenger’s jaw-dropped expressions, she found a place to exit with relative safety, and catch another ride. The best she found was lying flat atop a monumental RV, big enough to qualify for a housing grant. She actually fell asleep for a while, drowsing in the hot sun, but dreams woke her. Bad, wrong dreams.
Slipping off the roof of the RV at a busy truck stop, she finally felt safe enough to activate the tracker. Pressing the button felt like a commitment, but she chased her foreboding away with a large, rare hamburger, fries, and cold drink. The food tasted unbelievably decadent. She didn’t know how long she’d have to wait, so she lingered over it, careful to keep the hat she’d bought low over her eyes to hide her face from any hidden cameras. Her hair, unwashed for a while now, looked lank and tangled from the wind, and she left it that way. Better to look like a shabby traveler, though it wouldn’t fool any facial recognition software if she was unlucky enough to be scanned. She’d bought a book from the handy racks in the general store part of the truck stop, and was immersing herself in epic fantasy when a man slid into the booth across from her.
For a split second she didn’t recognize him, and her instincts went on full alert, but then she realized it was Patrick, half-hidden under thick stubble and bruises. He looked . . . rough. It was a shock, because she’d healed up from a goddamn IED, and he was still fighting the damage he’d taken in their first serious fight. If she’d needed proof of just how different they were now, it was written in their bodies.
He saw it, too, even though he wouldn’t know about the extent of her own sufferings, and he half smiled and shook his head. “I’m okay,” he said, and leaned forward on his elbows. They had the same style of cap, she realized, only his had some sort of fish on it, and hers had a bear. It might have been a cosmic karma sort of message. She hoped not. “Funny, I’d have taken you for a spy novel kind of girl. Maybe even romance.” He raised his eyebrows, and just like that, she fell in love with him, an almost physical click, a wave of emotion that washed through her like ice water and chemical heat and a longing so deep it brought tears to her eyes. She threw out a hand toward his, and he took it, and the warmth of his skin on hers made her shudder and lower her head, afraid she might actually cry. “Hey. You all right?”
She managed to nod. She’d kept so much down, bottled up, locked away, but all it took to shatter that wall was just a single stroke of his fingers.
He was what broke her. Every time.
“We need to go,” he said. “If you’re done eating.”
“How about you?”
“I’ve got something. Come on.”
She held his hand as they exited the booth; she’d already thrown cash on the table for the meal, and the coast seemed clear as they went out the side door. The place was as busy as ever, with walking-shorts-wearing travelers coming and going, some with cranky kids in tow. Professional truckers looked weary and no-nonsense, except for a few who were chatting up the lot lizard prostitutes who always seemed to find a place to stand at a place like this.
She linked her arm with Patrick’s. “What happened?”
“I didn’t dare stay with the medics. Good people, but too easy to find. So I checked myself out once they were sure I wasn’t in any danger of keeling over, and I checked in with Manny, who wouldn’t take the call. Pansy said you, Joe, and Riley had dropped off the radar.” He turned his head toward her, and she felt his eyes intent on her. “Is Joe all right?”
“Joe’s fine. So’s Riley. We found the guy we were looking for, but it was . . . complicated.” Bryn decided this wasn’t the time, or the place, to have that conversation.
“So, we’re not done.”
“Hardly.” She leaned against a wall with him, content for just this bare second to feel his fingers twined with hers, the clean air blowing in on them. “I need to head north.”
“Heading for . . . ?”
“I’d rather not say out here. Let’s find someplace more private.” She sent him a sidelong look. “Do you have a car?”
“Nope,” he said with a strange sort of cheer. “But I can get us where you need to go.”
That, Bryn realized as he led her around the parking lot, was because he had a motorcycle. A Harley, and it wasn’t new—battered, in fact, but well maintained. He had one helmet, which he handed her, an automatic courtesy that made her laugh, and then he checked himself and sighed. “Right. Only one of us has to worry about head injuries.”
“You sure you know how to drive this beast?”
“I got it this far.” He mounted the motorcycle with total assurance, keyed the ignition, and kicked it to life. It roared like a pissed-off lion. “Hop on.”
She did, carefully. It felt like straddling an earthquake. She wrapped her arms around his waist, and he accelerated smoothly into a curve, looping around cars and trucks and pedestrians, to the access road. Once on there, he opened the throttle to a steady, bone-shaking growl, and she found she got used to the vibration, the noise, and the general buffeting the wind gave her. She didn’t like it, per se, but it was an interesting way to travel as a passenger. On the whole, she liked being in control, though.
They went only about twenty miles or so before they arrived at a cluster of tourist hotels—celebrating what local attraction, Bryn couldn’t imagine, but it didn’t matter much. They were all low to medium rent places, and mostly half-full. Patrick picked one right in the middle and parked.
“Seriously?”
“You wanted to talk,” he said. “And I don’t know about you, but I need a shower and rack time. Plus, they have a bar. I could use a drink.”
She couldn’t argue with any of that logic.
“Hat on, head down,” he told her. “These places will have surveillance.”
She gave him a thumbs-up and tugged on her ball cap; he’d already pulled his from inside his jacket and fitted it low, shading his face.
Check-in was brief and uneventful, since Patrick peeled off a startling amount to put down as a cash deposit for the night, and the clerk was only too happy to pocket an extra two hundred to keep them out of the register. That won them two plastic keycards and a warm cookie, which Bryn thought was funny, but she devoured it like a savage in the elevator. Not protein, but delicious.
The room was conveniently located next to the stairs at the end of the hall—a decent escape point, if it came to that, which Bryn devoutly hoped it would not. Inside, the room was cool and dark and still, and when Patrick found the lights, it was also unexceptional.
It didn’t matter. Bryn took off her hat, tossed it on the dresser, shed the backpack, and collapsed on the bed with an almost sexual moan of gratification. Patrick stretched himself out next to her, staring at her with such intensity that it made her feel odd. “What?” she asked him.
“You look different,” he said. “Stronger. Sharper.”
“Is that bad?”
“No,” he said. “It’s good. You need to be.” He reached out and, very gently, ran a hand over her arm. “I’m going to t
ake a shower. We’ll talk after, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she echoed, and watched as he rolled up off the mattress and began stripping off layers. The hat went on the dresser next to hers. The battered leather jacket went next, thumped on the armchair with a click of buckles; he unbuttoned the jeans, slid them off, and sat on the bed to dispose of shirt, socks and underwear.
As he stood up, she lost her breath at the sight of him . . . not for the gorgeous planes of his body, which were objectively great, but for the bruises. They were days old and fading, but he’d taken a hell of a beating in that wreck.
He’d been lucky. No, she’d been lucky not to lose him.
He didn’t look at her, although she knew he was acutely aware of her stare; he crossed the small distance to the bathroom, closed the door, and a few seconds later she heard the hiss of the water start.
It felt like a dream, getting up and stripping off her sweaty clothes, all the way to the skin; the chill motel air made her shiver, and made her nipples stiffen and ache as she hesitated in front of the door. Then she opened it, breathed in the warm steam, and as she shut it behind her, Patrick slid back the shower door. He was shrouded in the mist and spray, slick and gleaming, and the slow warmth of his smile made her shiver.
“I was hoping you’d come.”
“Haven’t yet,” she said, “but what the hell, we can start slow.”
She stepped into the stinging hot downpour and sealed the two of them in. His mouth found hers in a hungry rush, damp flesh and a dark, smoky taste that made her whimper a little against his lips. The water hardly had room to run between their pressed bodies, and it felt good, so good, to be with him, with him, in ways that had nothing to do with all the nightmares they’d been living.
This . . . this was a dream, a sweetly seductive one, and for a long time they just held on, kissing, stroking, lazy with desire and sated by touch. He was already fully aroused, but one thing Patrick was a master at was restraint, and right now, he was in the mood to play slow, which suited her. His strong hands shampooed her hair, soaped her body, slipped into soft, dark places that made her catch her breath and arch against him.
